Sophos are warning that 41% of IT Professionals report at least daily phishing attacks. Sadly phishing is big business for the cyber crooks with most phishing attacks considered to be undertaken by numerous professional cybercrime groups or organisations. So it’s essential to remain vigilant at all times. ZDNet reported earlier this year that the number of phishing attacks is on the rise, more than doubling in recent months, with one in 61 emails delivered to corporate inboxes found to contain malicious URL. We feel we should mention that everyone should be careful and think before you click or open an attachment. This applies even if the email has been sent by a colleague, customer or friend as there has been an increase in 2019 on Office 365 accounts being compromised and hijacked by criminals often to steal their login credentials.

Phishing emails are often designed to look like they come from legitimate senders and contain malicious links that could either lead to malware being installed on your PC or encouraging you to provide sensitive information such as passwords. Attackers then either use this as a jumping off point for further attacks, or they look to sell it to other cyber criminals on underground forums.

We suggest that you verify the security of any website you visit, never click on links or download attachments from unknown sources and avoid any emails with poor spelling, grammar or formatting. Also do use unique & updated passwords, make sure your PC or device has the latest Microsoft update/ patches and that you frequently run an anti-virus/ malware scan to keep safe.